AMCAS 2009 Letter Pilot (Approx 118 Schools)
If you are applying to any of the schools listed here, please do the following:
- Complete the “AMCAS Letters of Evaluation/Recommendation Section” of the AMCAS Application
- Indicate in your AMCAS application that your letters will be in the form of a “Committee Letter” IF you have or plan to go through the UB Prehealth Committee
- Enter “Elizabeth Morsheimer” as the “Primary Author/Contact”
- As the Committee packet contains multiple other letters (4-7), it is NOT necessary for you to list those letter writers in the “Additional Authors” section of the AMCAS letters tab.
- You will be provided with a printable form containing an AMCAS letter ID. Our office in 109 Norton Hall NEEDS this form which includes your AMCAS Letter ID. You can send this to Jinny Majewski at vmajewsk@buffalo.edu or drop/mail the form off to 109 Norton Hall.
This is summarized as well under item #8 at the link.
If you came through the Prehealth Committee in April 2009 in support of a 2010 application for any of the professional schools (or plan to do so in September 2009), you will want to be sure you complete and submit a Release Form to our office (109 Norton Hall) once you begin to receive secondary applications from individual schools - MD and DO primarily. This is so our office has your permission to release your Prehealth Committee packet. We are UNABLE to send out your letters if we do not have this completed form on record in our office. If you are applying through AADSAS in support of a dental school application, you have more flexibility to release your letters at other times (earlier). The Release Form is available at the link.
You can drop this off to us, mail it to us or fax to us at 716-645-3042. Again, if we do not have a signed Release Form, we CANNOT send your letters.
Remember if you are applying to MD, DO or OD (optometry) schools check to see if the school is using VirtualEvals (VEClient) first.
Our offices uses VirtualEvals (VEClient) and *not* a system called Interfolio. If the schools do participate in VEClient, you only need to list the schools (ALL) on your Release Form and then contact us as you receive secondary applications, so that we stagger the sending of your letters over the summer as you receive and return your secondary (school specific) applications. Again, this is primarily for MD and DO schools only. You can email Virginia (Jinny) Majewski at vmajewsk@buffalo.edu as you get prompted to complete secondary applications. If the school is NOT using VEClient, you want to pre-address an envelope (available in 108 Norton) and provide the cash, check or money order for postage (please do not purchase and affix the postage yourself) ($1.50) to us so we can send your packet via US mail. Please turn in your Release Form with your prepared envelopes to 109 Norton.
For AMCAS (MD) Letter Pilot go to the link. For information on how to answer questions on your AMCAS application pertaining to your letters, please click on the link.
Please note especially items 5-8 as UB uses VEClient.
For AACOMAS (DO) please go to
the link. Most US DO schools use VEClient.
For AADSAS (DDS) please go to the link.
On this application, you will want to indicate that you have a Committee letter and only need to designate one person as the primary author. This person should be Dr. Lee Dryden, Chair of the Prehealth Committee. You can use: 109 Norton, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260 as his contact information. Again, these guidelines presume you have or plan to come through the Committee this year for your fall 2010 application. DDS schools do not use VEClient.
** You will be asked on your AADSAS application whether our office will be submitting your letters electronically or via paper to AADSAS. We will announce this decision soon via this listserv and the Prehealth Bulletin.**
OptomCAS (Optometry) Letters
We expect an announcement over the next week or so as to how we can transmit your letters to the new central service starting July 15 for applicants to US optometry schools. We will post more information to the listserv and/or Prehealth Bulletin once it becomes available to us.
If you have questions as you are applying, please consider setting a phone or in person appointment with Dalene Aylward or Libby Morsheimer by calling 716-645-6013.
NEW NEURONS: UB researchers have identified a new mechanism that prompts brain stem cells to differentiate into neurons, raising possibilities for new treatments for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
ALS RESEARCH: A UB dermatologist has won a $50,000 prize for developing a promising biomarker that can be used to assess the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Key Deadlines
University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine Early Assurance Application (for sophomores only) Please recall that Monday, June 1 is the *deadline* for applying to the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine Early Assurance Program (sophomores only). Your application, fees, transcripts and Committee letter are all due by this date. Please click on the link above for more information. If you have completed the Prehealth Committee process for spring 2009 and completed a Release Form for our office, your Committee letters will be delivered by our office for June 1.
Regular US Dental School (DDS) Application Process
Opens June 1, 2009 for the fall of 2010 entering class. Please click on the link for more information about applying to US dental schools.
SUNY Upstate Medical College (Syracuse) Early Assurance Deadline
The deadline to apply for college sophomores is July 1, 2009. Please go to the SUNY Upstate Early Assurance Program link here. Please recall our office must have a completed Release Form from you in order to forward your packet by the deadline.
Regular US Medical School (MD) Application Process.
The American Medical College Application Services, (AMCAS) expects to begin receiving applications on or around Tuesday, June 2. Please go to http://www.aamc.org/audienceamcas.htm and then click on “Applicants.” It is advisable to review the Support for the 2010 Entering Class for all the information resources available to guide you through the application. In order to have your Committee packet sent at the time you begin to receive secondary applications (after you submit your primary), please be sure to complete and submit a Release Form .
If you did not come through the April 1, 2009 Prehealth Committee and plan to do so for September 1, 2009, please be sure to set an appointment with Dalene Aylward or Libby Morsheimer several weeks/months ahead of the deadline to review the steps of the application and to begin securing individual letters of recommendation. Please call 645-6013 to set this appointment.
Please find the Summer 2009 Admissions Presentation & Tour schedule for Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine at the link provided. The Fall 2009 schedule will be out later this summer.
Jennifer Mailey
Director of Admissions
College of Veterinary Medicine
Cornell University
S2-009 Schurman Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
www.vet.cornell.edu
Tender Mercy Equine Rescue in Middleport, NY is looking for multiple forms of assistance so that they may continue their mission of caring for unadoptable horses who will spend the rest of their lives in the safety fo the rescue. For more information please click on the Tender Mercy website or contact jmw7765@roadrunner.com or TMER is also on Facebook.
This message is from Sydney Domanowski, president of APMS
Hope you’re all enjoying the weather and your time off from school! I just wanted to remind everyone that the Ride for Roswell is on Saturday June 27th at UB’s North campus. We will be volunteering as a group to help out where they need us before, during, and after the ride, we won’t actually be riding in the race.
Currently we have a total of 4 volunteers for the day and we need at least one more person to volunteer as a group. So please sign up so we can participate in this worth-while volunteer opportunity!
To participate, please e-mail Lauren Burkard at lburkard@buffalo.edu as soon as possible. In order to sign-up we have to have 5 members in our group signed up prior to the volunteer orientation sessions. Then, each of the participants has to attend one of the orientations which are on Wed. June 3 or Thurs. June 11th from 5-7pm on North Campus.
For more details and for a link to the website and forms to sign-up, please e-mail Lauren as soon as possible! lburkard@buffalo.edu
Thanks so much, stay involved, and have a great summer!
On PBS over Memorial Day weekend and on sale beginning next Monday, May 25, the 2007 documentary “Fighting for Life” will be broadcast on many PBS stations. The film trailer can be accessed on YouTube or the official documentary website Much of the story focuses on USUHS in Bethesda.
Fighting for Life is a powerful, sobering and emotional feature documentary portrait of American military medicine interweaving three stories:
Military doctors, nurses and medics, working with skill, compassion and dedication amidst the vortex of the Iraq War.
Wounded soldiers and marines reacting with courage, dignity and determination to survive and to heal.
Students at USU, the “West Point” of military medicine, on their journey toward becoming career military physicians.
The film follows 21 year-old Army Specialist Crystal Davis, from Iraq to Germany to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC, as she fights to recover and “bounce back” from the loss of a leg.
The filmmakers had extraordinary access to combat support hospitals in Iraq, medevac flights with wounded soldiers, and military hospitals in Germany and the United States.
D.O.s Could Play Key Role in Bolstering Primary Care Workforce, Say Academy Leaders
By Barbara Bein
5/19/2009
Like many students graduating from the nation’s colleges of osteopathic medicine, Richard Gray has chosen family medicine as his specialty. In fact, Gray, an AAFP student member from Fort Worth, Texas, and other soon-to-be doctors of osteopathic medicine, are an important part of the primary care workforce, says an Academy physician workforce expert.
“Traditionally, the osteopathic medical schools have attracted a larger proportion of young people interested in family medicine,” Perry Pugno, M.D., M.P.H., director of the AAFP Division of Medical Education, told AAFP News Now.
OSTEOPATHIC SCHOOL ENROLLMENT SEES STEADY RISE
For the past several years, enrollment at the 25 member colleges of the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, (2-page PDF; About PDFs) or AACOM, has been growing steadily.
Last fall, first-time enrollment among osteopathic medical students reached 4,768, an increase of 360 students, or about 8 percent, compared with the enrolling class of fall 2007, according to Tom Levitan, AACOM’s vice president for research and applicant services.
Most of the increase stemmed from the opening of two new osteopathic medical colleges in Yakima, Wash., and Parker, Colo. AACOM is expecting even more students to enroll this fall, with the opening of three new satellite campuses in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
The first-year enrollment growth in the osteopathic medical colleges parallels that in U.S. allopathic medical schools, which enrolled a historic high of 18,036 students last fall, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (6-page PDF; About PDFs)
PRIMARY CARE REMAINS CHOICE OF MANY OSTEOPATHIC GRADS
D.O.s have a long history of choosing primary care specialties, including family medicine, general internal medicine and general pediatrics, Levitan said. Even so, he noted, the results of annual AACOM surveys of graduating osteopathic medical students have shown a decline in self-reported interest in primary care from 40 percent of osteopathic graduates in 1999 to slightly less than 28 percent in 2007.
Interestingly, Levitan said, more osteopathic medical students opt for primary care specialties at the time they graduate than the number who said they planned to go into primary care when they entered school. For example, nearly 22 percent of students entering the nation’s colleges of osteopathic medicine in 2004 said they were interested in primary care. When those students graduated in 2008, slightly more than 29 percent chose primary care specialties.
According to the National Resident Matching Program, 45.1 percent of overall Match participants in 2008 chose residencies in family medicine, internal medicine (categorical) or pediatrics (categorical). By comparison, 55.3 percent of osteopathic medical students who participated in the 2008 Match chose one of those primary care specialties.
Levitan said he believes that osteopathic medical schools may provide a model for ways to produce more students interested in primary care careers.
Pugno agreed. For one thing, faculty at the osteopathic medical colleges who serve on admissions committees seem to seek students with characteristics that make them more likely to choose family medicine and primary care, such as coming from a rural background, he said. He noted that admissions policies are one component of the Academy’s overall strategy for attracting students interested in family medicine.
EXPOSURE TO PRIMARY CARE CAN GUIDE SPECIALTY CHOICE
Gray became a newly minted D.O. when he graduated May 16 from the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, or TCOM. In a few weeks, he will start his training in the St. Louis University/Scott Air Force Base family medicine residency in Belleville, Ill.
Gray said he learned about osteopathic principles as a physical therapy student at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. He worked full time as a physical therapist for eight years before entering TCOM in 2005.
During his first two years at TCOM, Gray said he was exposed to primary care repeatedly in the classroom, the clinic and the hospital. He did a preceptorship with a family physician in Fort Worth who still delivers babies. He also did a rural rotation with a group of four family physicians — three M.D.s and one D.O. — in the town of Littlefield in West Texas where he observed them practicing the full spectrum of family medicine.
“Excellent experiences with good family medicine preceptors throughout my four years at TCOM sparked my interest in the specialty. I believe that a family medicine residency will help me become the kind of physician I have always wanted to be,” Gray said. About 45 percent of the 128 students in his graduating class plan to go into primary care, he added.
Jason Dees, D.O., of New Albany, Miss., the new physician member of the AAFP Board of Directors, graduated from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, or WVSOM, in Lewisburg and did his family medicine residency at The Medical Center in Columbus, Ga.
Dees said he considered becoming a surgeon, but chose family medicine as his career after his third year of medical school.
“WVSOM required every third-year student to do community-based family medicine as our first rotation,” he said. “As I saw the relationships that developed between doctor and patient, I was hooked. The focus on whole-person care was also very appealing to me.”
Pugno said both allopathic and osteopathic physicians are needed to meet the demand for more primary care health professionals in the coming years. ”We are partners with the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians and other osteopathic physicians’ groups in our endeavors to make a difference in American health care,” he said.
This message is from Jayme Bograd from AMCAS Applicant Services to assist applicants with their AMCAS who have completed Study Abroad coursework.
“An advisor suggested that now would be a good time to re-circulate the common study abroad scenarios so you will find them below. Please feel free to have your advisee’s contact AMCAS directly at (202) 828-0607 during the hours of 9-7 ET weekdays if they want to walk through their scenarios directly with a representative as we know this part can be tricky for applicants.
Three common scenarios for study abroad programs:
- Programs sponsored by a U.S. or Canadian Institution
- Programs not sponsored by a U.S. or Canadian Institution, but for which credits were transferred to a U.S. or Canadian Institution
- Programs not sponsored by a U.S. or Canadian Institution, and for which credits were not transferred to a U.S. or Canadian Institution
1. If the program was sponsored by a U.S. or Canadian Institution, the applicant should:
- List the U.S. or Canadian Institution sponsoring the study abroad program, and on whose official transcript the coursework will appear
- Applicant should have the sponsoring institution send an official transcript to AMCAS
2. If the program was not sponsored by a U.S. or Canadian Institution, but the credits were transferred to a U.S. or Canadian Institution, the applicant should:
- List the U.S. or Canadian Institution that the credit will be transferred to
- List the foreign school under the “schools attended” section of the application
- Indicate that AMCAS does not require a transcript
- Select an exception reason of “Foreign College - Independent attendance - credits transferred to a U.S. or Canadian institution.
- Indicate that credit was transferred to another institution
- Select from the pre-populated drop down menu the U.S. or Canadian Institution sponsoring the study abroad program
- Enter all required course data under the name of the foreign school, but as it appears on the transcript on which the transferred credits appear.
Applicant should have U.S. or Canadian institution in which the credit was transferred to send an official transcript to AMCAS
3. If the program was not sponsored by a U.S. or Canadian Institution, and the credits were not transferred to a U.S. or Canadian Institution, the applicant should:
- List the foreign school under the “schools attended” section of the application
- Indicate that AMCAS does not require a transcript
- Select an exception reason of “Foreign College - Independent attendance - no credits transferred to a U.S. or Canadian institution.”
- Indicate that credit was not transferred to another institution
- Enter all required course data, except credit hours attempted, as taken at the foreign school.
